Chef Quest

This game isn’t technically retro but I would like to argue that it’s a Commodore 64 exclusive and also it’s my webcomic and I’m in charge around here so nyah nyah.

Anyway! Chef Quest is a game made by my bestest buddy Ant “Handsome man with a handsome plan” Stiller for the Reset 64 craptastic competition, and that’s the mag I originally made this comic for!

Download Chef Quest (and a great assortment of some other 4 kilobyte games for the venerable Commodore 64 here!

It’s a game where you’re a chef and you have to go into your basement to find monsters and chop them up to make meals out of them! I really liked this game, and I’m incredibly biased towards the game’s creator, so there’s your ethics in games journalism for you, whateeeeeeever

Technocop

Mikey on a bikey I really wanted to love this game! It was like, Roadblasters, but also Robocop mashed into one game, but the problem was that the driving bit was kinda sucky and the Robocop bit was kinda sucky and that made the entire game kinda sucky. It got converted to all sorts of platforms and each version was kiiiinda a bit better but it wasn’t as fun as playing Roadblasters and then playing Robocop. Shame!

Barbarian 2

I was massively disappointed by this game when I first played it. I loved the first Barbarian game, a really fun one-on-one fighting game based on swinging swords instead of using punches and kicks. Of course, everyone who played it fondly remembers the decapitation move, even though it was hard to execute HA HA WHAT A GREAT PUN.

But the sequel was a slow, difficult to control, slow, navigationally confusing, slow, weird action action adventure game that was also slow, did I mention the slow bit? You kind of walk awkwardly through a bunch of screens – you could run, but it would usually wind up with you dying quickly – that had big pits or big monsters or what have you, and then you got lost after two minutes and then loaded something else.

Oh! The graphics were lovely, though. Giant monsters looked cool on the screen, and the hero characters were well crafted and animated, but damn it I just wanted Barbarian, but more of that, you know?

(This comic was a bonus extra for my beloved Patreon supporters that I posted over a year ago – become a supporter for only $1 a month to get lots of behind the scenes goodies and bonus comics!)

Mama Llama

Another Jeff Minter classic? Well, I was never a huge fan of this one but I really do admire the attempt at doing something original, which you can always count on with his games, so I reckon it’s definitely worth a go! My favourite Minter game on the C64 is Sheep In Space, which I really should do a comic about one day. I did one about Ancipital, though!

I originally did this comic for Reset 64, the world’s greatest Commodore 64 magazine ever! You can read it for free on the Reset 64 website and find out about all the new Commodore 64 games that are being made!

Law Of The West

Truth be told I don’t have that many memories of this game, except I remember being disappointed that the graphics didn’t match the gameplay I had in mind. I thought it was more of a shooting gallery kind of game but there was all this talking and stuff. I WAS NOT A PATIENT CHILD (or adult).

Also I’m not a huge fan of the soft pencil inking style I used on this one, it just ends up making everything look soft and out of focus! WHOOPS SORRY

Every Game Ever

This actually happened! Except for the bit where I ended up with an empty room because the damn thing is still full of boxes of old games and magazines> Like there’s been three different occasions where I genuinely thought I gave away every Commodore 64 game I had and then I go back and find yet another box of the damn things. It’s like my room is growing them!

Honestly I’m glad to be rid of a lot of these old games and systems – for me emulation has gotten to the point where convenience beats absolute accuracy, and I just don’t have the time or inclination to bother with faffing with old cables and dodgy floppy disks to play something for five minutes. I’m totally happy with a nice emulator and a good controller and a hard drive or SD card with every single game ever on it.

Blasphemy? Maybe. Worth it? Absolutely.

Return Of The Jedi

NEVER GIVE ATARI ANY MONEY FOR ANY REASON EVER

Anyway! I really did not like this game at all. After the awesome 3D Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back arcade games we got this really simple affair which was hard to control and you never had enough time to see what was coming up ahead and it all just felt very lacklustre. Avoid!

Bonus content! Here’s a 12 year old photo of me being angry in front of an Atari sign:

Blagger

Blagger was a big hit on the C64 back in the day, but it was kind of before my time and I think it’s not really my thing. I watched some YouTube videos and…I don’t really get how this is meant to be fun?

Ahhhh….early ’80s European platform games were really a different kind of thing.

Nemesis

YEP NOT ACTUALLY ABOUT NEMESIS AT ALL, NOT EVEN SORRY, WILL NEVER APOLOGISE

I liked Nemesis on the Game Boy a lot as it turned out! It was the version I ended up playing the most, for some reason it never grabbed my attention on the C64 that much – I was always more into Salamander, Katakis or the still amazing Armalyte. But on Game Boy it was fantastic! It was so much better than it had any right to be, really, even with all that sprite flicker and slowdown. It was just great to play something of that arcade scale on a humble little handheld.

Super Sprint

I cannot imagine how ticked off I would be sitting in the audience of a Super Sprint race. I mean you don’t even have time to get a drink and start convincing yourself you’re having fun being outside instead of safely at home playing video games.

Anyway! I liked this game back in the day. The arcade machine looked weird and cool, with three steering wheels that you could spin like mad, they basically had no friction so you have to be super precise with any movement. The C64 home conversion was buggy but still perfectly playable, and didn’t cost me 40 cents a go!